A sourcebook of extended quotations from ancients, all dealing directly with the Pagan mystery religions.

Who you gonna trust?  The ancients. Believing scholars shade the facts in favor of the myth.  Non-believers exaggerate and make up facts and connections as a way to attack the church. 

So who are you going to trust?  That's up to you.  I trust the ancients—people alive back when Christianity began, and before. That's what this book is about.

This is a sourcebook, a collection of primary documents—excerpts from ancient authors who wrote about Pagan religion and early Christianity.  It's a great collection, with the original text of most of the standard ancient references to the pagan mystery religions.

This is a powerful book. You'll discover firsthand, right from the pens of the ancients themselves,  that Dionysus came to earth "incognito, disguised as a man"; that Pagan Gods died and were reborn with the meaning that "the God is saved, and we shall have salvation."; that pagans had initiation ceremonies seen as "a voluntary death", sacred meals shared with the God, ceremonial washing, Pagan miracles, a Godman who changed water into wine, and a Pagan version of the great flood.  And much more.  

An important book that no serious student will be without. Highly recommended.

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Religions of Rome
Volume 1 A History
by Mary Beard

Religions of Rome
Volume 2, A Sourcebook
by Mary Beard

	Volume 1: a well organized, well written and very detailed look at Roman religion—mostly Roman civic religion.
	Volume 2: instead of footnoting hard to find primary sources, Beard provedes an excellent sourcebook giving extended primary sources illustrating and expanding the points made in volume 1.

Highly recommended.

Volume 1 at Amazon.com

Volume 2 at Amazon.com

Collected Ancient Greek Novels
edited by B. P. Reardon

The ancients had novels—who knew?

If you're used to "ancient literature" as excruciating trochaic hexameter, you'll be happily surprised by this collection.

The smile of daybreak was just beginning to brighten the sky, the sunlight to catch the hilltops, when a group of men in brigand gear peered over the mountain that overlooks the place where the Nile flows into the sea at the mouth that men call the Heracleotic. They stood there for a moment, scanning the expanse of the sea beneath them: first they gazed out over the ocean, but as there was nothing sailing there that held out hope of spoil and plunder, their eyes were drawn to the beach nearby. This is what they saw: a merchant ship was riding there, moored by her stern, empty of crew but laden with freight. This much could be surmised even from a distance, for the weight of her cargo forced the water up to the third line of boards on the ship's side. But the beach!—a mass of newly slain bodies, some of them quite dead, other half-alive and still twitching, testimony that the fighting had only just ended….
[Heliodoros, An Ethiopian Story (Aithiopika), Chapter 1 (3d century AD?),—which you can find in: Reardon, B. P., Collected Ancient Greek Novels (1989), pg. 353]

Lousy with miracles Like chocolate chips in mama's cookies, miracles were a basic ingredient in ancient people's understanding of how the world works. Every bite—another miracle. The ancient world was lousy with miracles.

Don't believe me, believe the ancients. This excellent sourcebook gives hundreds of examples—250 pages—of ancient miracles recorded by the pens of ancients themselves.

You'll read short excerpts from ancient texts describing Pagan Gods who healed the sick (blindness, paralysis, lameness), raised the dead, exorcised demons, controlled nature, turned water into wine, walked on water, calmed storms, and more.

Well organized, easy to read. Highly recommended.

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An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion; Readings from the Avesta and the Achaemenid Inscriptions
translated by William W. Malandra

The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Raymond Faulkner, et. al., translators

This is the original text of a famous and revealing collection of ancient spells the Egyptians put in tombs along with the dead guy. The idea was for the dead guy to use the power of the magic spells as a guide and tool in the complicated Egyptian afterlife.

Yes I know that sounds sounds silly, but the book tells us a lot about Egyptian religion—including the Egyptian savior Gods Ra and Osiris.

The famous Chapter 125 describes Osiris' believers standing before Osiris after death, to be judged according to the life they lead, seeing if they would to make it into Egyptian Heaven or end up suffering in Egyptian Hell.

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The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library
Compiled and translated by Kenneth Guthrie
Edited by David Fideler

A sourcebook of ancient writings about Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, everything from full biographies to one-line fragments.

SEE Pythagoras perform miracles.
SEE His apostles perform miracles.
SEE him teach his disciples about the immoral soul.
SEE HIm descend into Hades and return.
SEE his followers call him divine.

All from the pens of the ancients themselves. Ooh yeah.

(Guthrie collected and translated most of the stuff here, publishing a small run in 1920. Fideler dug up and added more Pythagorean stuff for the 1987 and 1988 editions—say that three times fast.)

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Philosophy
edited by David Sedley

Greek Philosophy
Thales to Aristotle
editor Reginald Allen

The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations
by Michael Holmes, Editor

The Nag Hammadi Library
edited by James M. Robinson

Pagans & Christians in Late Antiquity
A Sourcebook
by A. D. Lee

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
edited by Geza Vermes

Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora
From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE - 117 CE)
by John M. G. Barclay

The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans, A Diasporan Sourcebook
Margaret Williams, Editor